http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
JESSE VENTURA finally found an opponent he could not pin: The
Creator.

The governor of Minnesota experienced this epiphany the instant Playboy
magazine published an interview in which he described religion as a crutch
for weak-minded people. His popularity ratings immediately hurtled toward
the abyss. Overnight, he went from the most popular politician in his
state's history to another chump with a limousine and an entourage.

To understand the depth of the governor's predicament, look beyond the
obvious. Sure, Jesse the Theologian echoed weak-minded Marxist pap about
religion as an opiate. Sure, he overlooked the fact that more people will
attend religious services this week than will attend Reform Party
conventions in a millennium. But the most worrisome thing is that Ventura
declared open season on human freedom.

Let me explain. Organized religion -- pick your faith -- begins with the
belief that objective moral truth exists; that right and wrong are not
merely social conventions, but moral facts.

When scientists calculate the speed of light, we assume they're measuring
something that has been ever thus. Light moves at 186,000 miles per second
not because some 19th Century physicists put a speed gun on solar rays, but
because that's how things are. Mankind did not create the fact. Men
discovered it.

Global religions approach morality the same way. There is astonishing
congruence in world faiths -- and especially since the time of Moses -- of
what is right and what is wrong. Murder isn't wrong merely because it is an
inconvenient way of resolving disputes. It is wrong, period, even when
people aren't killing each other. Ethical facts thus are as true as the
speed of light, and as integral to the scheme of things.

If religious verities are true, it follows that men didn't concoct them.
Religions pinpoint the source as the Creator of the Universe -- Hashem
of Judaism; the Lord of Christianity; the Allah of Islam.

This is a crucial development because it undermines any government that
exalts man as the measure of all things. World leaders have understood for
centuries the subversive nature of faith. Nomadic Jews were an endless
annoyance to pharaohs and kings who wanted to be venerated as G-ds. Pontius
Pilate realized that Jesus -- whom one might have dismissed as an eccentric
hick from Nazareth -- was a profound threat to the empire. Allah supplanted
man-G-ds throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.

Early religionists didn't conquer through force of arms. Most were
notoriously meek. St. Paul went to Rome and wound up with his head on a
platter. Stalin once scoffed, "And how many divisions has the Pope?"

Ventura likes to talk trash

Great religions undermine authority subtly. They confirm what most of us
suspect -- that political power is transitory; that men of wealth and power
are more often vain than virtuous; that the worst oppressions and idiocies
of the age will pass; that history will recall martyrs more fondly than
madmen. Simple faith thus engenders the thing despots fear most -- an
individual conscience. There is nothing more dangerous than people who do
not fear the worst you can do to them.

This century has demonstrated conclusively that a witness to faith
possesses not a weak mind, but one of almost unimaginable strength. Jews who
endured Hitler's charnel-houses and Stalin's gulags were not simpletons.
Many displayed heavenly strength.

Indeed, there is nothing easier than to abandon faith in the face of
inhumanity. The coward is the first to renounce G-d and declare, "Hail,
Caesar!" Only the saint has the courage to die for his or her beliefs.

Yet martyrs do much more than defend their faiths. They also protect the
ideals necessary for the preservation of any social order. Imagine what
would happen if we erased any one of the Ten Commandments. The certain
result would be anarchy and violence -- theft, violence, infidelity,
idol-worship, chaos.

If you dispense with religion, you abandon the central tenet of our
democracy -- that all people possess inalienable rights. Justice becomes a
matter for leaders to decide. Dignity becomes a luxury; not a birthright.

Many people agree with him, especially among intellectual elites. Of course
religion is a crutch. Without it, civilization collapses -- but so do the
commonsense virtues Ventura espoused on the campaign trail. The ex-wrestler
may not realize it, but a lot of folks voted for him because they thought
him more righteous -- in a keen and combative way -- than his competitors.

The entire controversy brings to mind an old joke, adapted to the
circumstances: